ABSTRACT
Congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG) are a group of metabolic diseases resulting from defects in glycan synthesis or processing. The number of subgroups and their phenotypic spectrums continue to expand with most related to deficiencies of N-glycosylation. ALG9-CDG (previously CDG-IL) is the result of a mutation in ALG9. This gene encodes the enzyme alpha-1,2-mannosyltransferase. To date, a total of 10 patients from 6 different families have been reported with one of four ALG9 mutations. Seven of these patients had a similar phenotype with failure to thrive, dysmorphic features, seizures, hepatic and/or renal cysts; the other three patients died in utero from a lethal skeletal dysplasia. This report describes an additional patient with ALG9-CDG who has a milder phenotype. This patient is a term female born to Caucasian, Canadian, non-consanguineous parents of Scottish decent. Prenatally, dysmorphic features, numerous renal cysts and minor cardiac malformations were detected. Post-natally, dysmorphic features included shallow orbits, micrognathia, hypoplastic nipples, talipes equinovarus, lipodystrophy and cutis marmorata. She developed failure to thrive and seizures. The metabolic work-up included analysis of a transferrin isoelectric focusing, which showed a type 1 pattern. This was confirmed by glycan profiling, which identified ahomozygous mutation in ALG9, c.860A > G (p.Tyr287Cys) (NM_1234567890). This had been previously published as a pathogenic mutation in two Canadian patients. Our goal is to contribute to the growing body of knowledge for this disorder by describing the phenotypic spectrum and providing further insight on prognosis.
ABSTRACT
Congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG) are a group of mostly autosomal recessive disorders primarily characterized by neurological abnormalities. Recently, we described a single CDG patient with a de novo mutation in the X-linked gene, Signal Sequence Receptor 4 (SSR4). We performed whole-exome sequencing to identify causal variants in several affected individuals who had either an undifferentiated neurological disorder or unsolved CDG of unknown etiology based on abnormal transferrin glycosylation. We now report eight affected males with either de novo (4) or inherited (4) loss of function mutations in SSR4. Western blot analysis revealed that the mutations caused a complete loss of SSR4 protein. In nearly all cases, the abnormal glycosylation of serum transferrin was only slightly above the accepted normal cutoff range.
